The Solar System

In these early days of our exploration of the Universe, only our immediate
neighbourhood of the Solar System lies within range of close observation
and direct study. Despite our primitive methods of spacecraft propulsion
and the huge distances probes have to cover to reach their exploration targets,
since 1989 all eight planets and many of their moons have been visited by
spacecraft (see the Links page for a
list). Several asteroids, comets and a dwarf planet (Ceres is currently
being studied by NASA's Dawn spacecraft) have now also been visited.
With New Horizons' visit to Pluto in the summer of 2015, every
class of Solar System body will have been visited by mankind. (Although
you could very reasonably argue that Voyager 2's encounter with
Neptune's largest moon Triton in 1989 was humanity's first visit to a plutoid,
as Triton is almost certainly a captured trans-Neptunian ice dwarf.)

All the pages in the Solar System section will be updated as time goes
on. We have much to learn about the Solar System, and we will do our best
to make occasional additions on new topics and update pages as our knowledge
of the Solar System expands. Nevertheless, our website will only provide
an overview of Solar System objects; for more detailed information you will
need to explore the Web. We will provide links to many official sources
of information throughout this section of the site, to help in this regard.